It’s time to admit our BRT failings

In November 2016 just over six months after the Dar es Salaam Bus Rapid Transport project was launched, this column wrote “BRT: A classic case of how we run down things”. The piece narrated with concern that, the project was already tottering on the brink of failure due to, and I summarize, incompetence by both management & staff, , attitude problems leading to laisses faire and last but not least, our age-old problem , “dancing ourselves lame before the main dance”.

The column attracted scant reading but one commentator emailed in saying, “you have no idea how that headline speaks for many things that we let go wrong in our country.” Today we go back to this subject matter because our evaluation of the project which President John Magufuli fought cartels to ensure came to be, today reads like an indictment of why we should be asking ourselves the real question here, “should we not accept our failings at running projects that need expertise and hire experts to run them while we sit back and enjoy the proceeds/benefits until such time it shall have dawned on us that competence, timeliness and attitude are needed to make them succeed?”

Minister Selemani Jafo did the classic Houdini on Wednesday last week. In the face of failed bus schedules, passengers ranting and staff strikes, there he was demanding for close management of the service provider (UDART) by the owner of the route (DART).

If nearly two years ago we evaluated that, “there is every reason to believe that the optimism was misplaced as the interwoven ecology has been reset to default settings flagged by the increasing crowds of milling passengers at major BRT termini at Morocco, Kimara Mwisho, Gerezani and Kivukoni,” the situation is much worse now.

The two who are being asked to co-operate have shown for the life time of the operation that co-operation is a foreign word in their lexicon. Evidence is the fact that 70 buses are on the brink of being auctioned if someone was doing their job well at Dar es Salaam Port for they have overstayed while the two entities bicker over mundane procedural matters.

Meanwhile, not very long ago, we all so the chest thumping everywhere including in parliament as we were told that the BRT project is so successful this part of the world that it is attracting others from near and far to come and “learn from us.”

Do not get me wrong. Kenya tried and failed. Uganda tried and failed to establish similar plans. So we can say, we have bragging rights that a project which was part of a joint East African Urban Transport plan that took three ministers including our very own Shukuru Kawambwa from the region to a learning trip to Brazil, came a cropper in those two countries due to corruption and lack of political will.

We can brag to the high mountains that a no-nonsense President Magufuli followed his Public works role with a term in office as President and run the cartels out of town thus ensuring the project took off . But while we brag, can we at least begin to be real and accept that BRT is failing because of an attitude problem, period.

Our attitude which we wear like a chink of armour and sometimes unknowingly refer to as Utanzania at best, sucks. In those early days the enthusiastic drivers and were introducing themselves and even giving passengers a touristic narration of sites. Today you’ll be lucky if they do not berate their passengers for one thing or the other.

As I wrote then, “One Saturday a few weeks ago when things threatened to get out of hand, it was established that the fuel supplier too was on a go slow and had not delivered hence the buses could not leave the yard.

On their part passengers have not been helpful either in achieving the needs of a bus service that handles its passengers with dignity. They have refused to drop the daladala habits of scramble for the fittest.

BRT collects $1.2m monthly. They need to relook at their internal dynamics including staffing and other operational costs unless they are out to prove we are great at running down things.”

We ask again is it Utanzania when we exhibit such laissez-faire attitude in the way we manage such a wonderful project to the level we need foreigners to come and run it professionally and profitably?